For this exhibition, the American artist Tony Oursler takes over the Chapelle de l’Oratoire with an original installation designed specifically for the place.
Through this immersive work, the artist invites visitors on a journey that combines visual references to the history of hypnotism and various contemporary anxieties linked to digital technologies, from smartphones to big data.
Born in New York in 1957, Tony Oursler is a major figure on the American art scene. It was at Cal Arts (California Institute of Arts) that he made his first video tapes and met the artist Mike Kelley, with whom he founded an experimental punk-rock band, The Poetics, in 1977.
Within video art, Tony Oursler uses a form of theatricality that hybridizes a wide variety of mediums: video, film, photography, painting, sculpture but also musical and soundtracks that are the subject of specific work. Very early on, he broadened the notion of screens to include unusual media, on the scale of architecture and public space, but also, on rag dummies (the famous dummies or dolls that appeared in 1992 and made him famous on the international art scene), in narrative and spectacular installations made up of sets that are both burlesque and tragic in nature.
His works can be found in the largest collections, such as the Centre Pompidou. His work was recently presented at the MoMA in New York, resulting in the publication of a catalogue of his personal collection of historical documents related to the popular culture of entertainment, the occult and magic shows.
Credits:
Portrait de Tony Oursler © Courtesy of the artist
Tony Oursler's immersive installation – Chapelle
- Performers: Emily Allan, Jean Brassard, Dominique Bousquet, Sarah de Burgh, Jason Scott Henderson, Leah Hennessey, David Johansen, Joy Mattar, Ruby McCollister, E.J. O'Hara, Brandon Olson, Jack Oursler, Emilie Rochefort, Samantina Zenon
- Editing: Jack Colton
- Props: Corey Riddell
